


Wolf and Sword

by merriman



Series: Time of Truce [1]
Category: Highlander: The Series, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Immortality, Mash-up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-14 09:09:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2185947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/pseuds/merriman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU/crossover/mashup wherein Sasha and Aleksis Kaidanovsky are Immortal in the style of Highlander, following the two of them through the year or so leading up to Operation Pitfall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wolf and Sword

**Author's Note:**

> Art is forthcoming, I promise.
> 
> I cannot thank my betas enough. You are awesome.

There were always rumors in the shatterdomes. It was impossible to stop. They spread from one team to another, hopping from dome to dome every time a Jaeger got deployed somewhere new. So many people living and working together, people talked. People talked a lot. And it didn't take much to get them talking in the first place.

A handful of UN officials attended the tenth anniversary Trespasser memorial service at the Los Angeles shatterdome and that by itself was enough to start rumors scuttling through the halls. Five years before there had been a whole host of UN officials and other varied politicians from around the world. They had converged on Los Angeles to show their solidarity and devotion to the Jaeger Program. There had been a special update from the crew working on the newest Jaeger, Crimson Typhoon. A number of other Jaegers from every shatterdome had been there to commemorate the day. One would have thought that the tenth anniversary would have been just as momentous an occasion. One would have been wrong.

"They barely looked at each other?" Sasha repeated over dinner when the crews who had gone to the memorial returned. Cherno Alpha had been on patrol at the time, the result of a lousy game of cards that Sasha certainly hadn't rigged to avoid putting on her dress uniform, no matter what Aleksis said. 

Across the table from Sasha and Aleksis sat two of the pilots who'd gone to the memorial. Yuna and So-Yi both nodded to Sasha in affirmation. Sasha glanced up at Aleksis, who shrugged.

"Could mean nothing," he muttered.

"Like hell it could," Sasha told him. "Of course it means something. When Marshal Pentecost won't even look at those shitstains from the UN that means something's up."

"Like what?" Yuna asked. Sasha liked her. She was a good kid and a solid pilot. 

"Like the UN is thinking about these fortresses we have," Sasha said. "They are thinking of all the people we have here, eating three meals a day paid for by the United Nations, building machines the Kaiju rip apart, repairing them to go out again and for what? To get ripped apart until they cannot be repaired."

"Aren't there still plans for more Jaegers?" So-Yi asked. But Yuna was shaking her head. There were plans all right, but no new Jaegers had been completed since Striker Eureka four years back.

Sasha scowled down at her tray. So-Yi was still looking at her, probably hoping for Sasha to brush it off, assure her that it was just a hitch that would soon be straightened out. But Sasha had dealt with too many politicians and too many governments. Once they stopped worrying about lives and started worrying about money they would start to cut back. And cut and cut and cut. 

"At least we'll be back on duty again soon," Yuna said after the silence stretched a moment too long for comfort. "When we got in they told us Nova will be ready tomorrow."

"You'd better go take a look at her," Sasha cautioned. Yuna and So-Yi were still so young, still somehow naive at times. "You never know what they'll decide to skimp on to save on repair costs now. You go over every inch of Nova Hyperion. You make sure she is flawless. We need you solid out there."

So-Yi nodded and shared a glance with Yuna. Sasha was pleased to see the serious looks on their faces. Naive, maybe, but learning, and not foolish by any means. The two younger pilots stood together and headed off, already discussing potential issues they meant to give extra scrutiny to.

After Yuna and So-Yi were gone Sasha went back to her meal. She wasn't very hungry anymore but it was foolish and disrespectful to waste good food. Beside her Aleksis had finished his own dinner and was looking around the mess hall. 

"What?" Sasha asked, watching him watch the people around them. 

"Nothing," he said before stealing her last piece of bread. She stole it back and picked up her tray.

"Let's go."

***

In their quarters Sasha stripped down to her shorts and slid onto their bunk to curl around Aleksis. He rested one hand on her hip, pulling her close.

"What did you see?" she asked him. 

"Nothing," he insisted, closing his eyes. But they had been together far too long for Sasha to fall for that trick. She hooked one leg around his waist and hoisted herself up to sit astride him. That didn't get much of a response, though she hadn't expected one. But when she tickled his sides with both hands he twitched, working to keep his mouth in a serious scowl and his eyes closed. She tickled him again, moving up his sides to where she knew he was always susceptible. Such a big strong man and so ticklish. It was the universe's way of evening things out, she supposed.

Aleksis was still trying to control himself but they both knew how this particular battle always ended. With weapons in hand they were evenly matched and could likely spar for days without one truly winning over the other. Not so when it came to this. Eventually Aleksis howled with laughter, reaching for Sasha's hands and wrestling with her until they were both tangled in the sheets and each other. As he caught his breath Aleksis kissed Sasha gently and brushed her hair back from her face.

"People are complacent," he told her. "Our people, here. We are fed, we are housed, you and I, Yuna and So-Yi, we protect them. We have protected them for almost ten years. If they shut us down, or even just cut us back, who do you think they will blame? The politicians? Or us, for not protecting them?"

Sasha had to think about that one. She had dealt with many people over the course of her life. Many groups, many mobs. They turned their ire on the ones they held responsible for their plights, but they fought against those within their reach. 

"We will find a way to take care of them," Sasha said. "Even if we have to call in every favor we have tucked away our whole lives."

"That is a lot of favors," Aleksis pointed out. And he was right. They had been given many opportunities to help someone who could now help them. "Maybe we will be okay."

"And maybe we won't," Sasha said. "But our people will be."

***

It was hard for Sasha to pinpoint when she and Aleksis had started catching bits of each other's dreams. It was just something that had happened after they'd started piloting. Even now they weren't sure how it had started but they knew other pilots didn't do it quite the same way they did. They'd spoke about it once with Stacker Pentecost and his co-pilot, before the fight with Onibaba had put Tamsin out of commission and in the hospital. The other two had confided that they too had shared dreams, but it was more that they were in sync enough that their minds seemed to cough up the same imagery and shared memories on the same nights. Sasha and Aleksis had taken a chance and told the other two Mark I pilots what they had at the time only told the tech who'd administered their first drift test: They were both Immortal and centuries old, both kept alive by a bizarre electrical charge that had blown out the pons they'd tested on. Anya, the tech, had been a whiz kid who'd apprenticed under Caitlin Lightcap and she'd made adjustments to the machinery before testing them again. They'd gotten some of the highest scores ever recorded and now Anya was their LOCCENT ops chief. And whenever they came back from a patrol or a deployment, they spent their nights linked, their dreams full of memories from centuries past.

Tonight the dream was Sasha's, or it had been originally. She'd been having it for over six hundred years, off and on. It changed, as dreams do, but the beginning was always the same: She was standing alone in a field full of bodies. The one closest to her was Cessily, who had taken her in when she had become immortal, taught her how to use a sword, how to fight, the rules they lived by, how to survive. And she had turned on Sasha fifty years later, never offering an explanation for why and never backing down. Sasha had taken her head and stood in the field and not wept a single tear until she'd gotten good and drunk two days later. Now there was Cessily's body, as usual, with her head a few feet away. In the real world there had been a fire, but there was no fire in the dream. It was just cold and raw. 

Then came more bodies, fading into existence just beyond Cessily. First would be the people whose heads she had taken. Every challenger, every opponent, every person whose energy she had absorbed to carry with her until she lost her own head. She recognized some of them and knew there would be some she couldn't name now. It had been so long. 

After those would come the people she hadn't killed. People who had died anyhow. People she hadn't been able to save. The field had grown so much larger when the Kaiju first came through the Breach. The bodies went on and on and on, piles of them from Korea and Russia and Vietnam and everywhere else they'd been deployed. It didn't seem to matter if they'd managed to kill their target without it making landfall. The dream filled in casualties all the same and amongst them would be her friends. Immortals she'd known for centuries, mortals she'd worked alongside in the dome and in the prison and everywhere she'd lived. They grew so heavy on the ground that she had to walk on top of them to keep going forward. She didn't know why she kept moving forward in the dream. It seemed to happen without her input. 

Eventually, after what felt like a thousand years of death, Sasha moved past the bodies and there was Aleksis, standing at the edge of his own field of people he doubtless knew and mourned. They both had their swords out. They had met on a field like this, full of bodies in the middle of a war they didn't know if anyone could truly win. They had faced each other and sheathed their swords, just as they did now, reaching out and clinging to each other though they had been strangers at the time. Now they knew each other so well they could walk in each other's minds and not get lost. Sasha gripped Aleksis tightly and heard something new in the dream: The echoing roar of a Kaiju rising from the sea.

***

When Sasha woke, Aleksis was opening his eyes as well. He let her hold on as tight as she'd held in the dream, eventually sitting up and moving her into his lap.

"That was worse than last time," she said eventually. 

Aleksis nodded and leaned them back against the wall at the head of the bed. "I saw Yuna," he told her. "Not So-Yi though. Just Yuna. Apart from her co-pilot, alone."

Sasha winced. No pilots liked being separated for long. For a pilot to die alone, disconnected, that was a nightmare they had all faced the possibility of since the disaster of Knifehead's attack on Alaska and Yancy Becket's death. 

It was the middle of the night, but Sasha still pushed away after kissing Aleksis, climbing out of bed to get dressed in workout clothes. Rings and necklace were left on her desk. She was about to simply pull her hair back in a tail when she felt Aleksis' hands at the back of her head, quickly braiding her hair for her. 

As odd as the hour was, there were people in the gym. There were always people in the gym. Whether they were just coming off a shift or due to go on duty soon, people never missed a chance to stay in shape. It was an unspoken rule in the shatterdome that everyone was in fighting form all the time. A couple of the LOCCENT staff were doing calisthenics drills in the corner while Sasha and Aleksis got out their swords and started their own practice. 

No one had ever really questioned the swords. They'd gotten some raised eyebrows and curious looks, but by the time the dome had been constructed they'd already built a reputation. Sasha had overheard someone in the background over the comms once, after a particularly nasty fight, saying who cared if they practiced with blades if it meant they could fight like they did in Cherno? And that was that.

As Sasha and Aleksis circled each other, blocking and parrying and meeting each others' moves, the point wasn't to win. It was a welcome change from how they'd fought all their lives before now. There would be no beheading at the end. There never would be. 

They practiced for three hours, drawing the occasional spectator or two. Yuna and So-Yi came in near dawn and geared up for fencing practice. Masks, suits, gloves, blunted epees in their hands. As Sasha cooled down and took care of her own sword she watched them. Nova Hyperion definitely took more of its fighting style from its' pilots' fencing backgrounds. It was a graceful Jaeger, fast and agile like many of the Mark IVs. That seemed to be the direction things had been heading, culminating in Striker Eureka. Sasha shook her head as Aleksis joined her and they packed up their things. There was no way to know now what they'd have been able to do with the Jaegers if they'd kept up the research.

"We have time to rest before our patrol tonight," Aleksis said as they left the gym.

"Food first," Sasha insisted. "Otherwise you know we will end up hungry in the middle of our patrol and I am not packing a snack."

Aleksis laughed and nodded, following Sasha to the mess.

***

It would take a few days for the rumors and speculation to spread throughout the entire dome. It was a big space with a large population, but it would get around by the end of the week. Some people, however, heard everything. Anya was one of them. She didn't share what she knew and so people came to her on their own, spilling their secrets, wanting opinions. But when Anya wanted opinions from somewhere else she turned to Sasha and Aleksis.

"What do you both think about it all?" Anya asked them over the comm at precisely 3:27 a.m. while they were out on patrol. Everyone else would be catching a bit of sleep while they could. Anya liked the overnight shifts on her own.

"What all?" Sasha asked.

"Marshal Pentecost, the UN, the memorial. Do you think they're shutting us down?"

Sasha frowned as a few shared memories flickered between herself and Aleksis, visions of people out of work, hungry, begging. She shoved them back into the drift to answer Anya.

"Maybe not," she allowed. "But cutting us back? Yes. Definitely no new Jaegers, no matter what you might have heard from the optimists. We will see late requisitions, and you hear what those UN fucks are saying on the news. We aren't a sure bet anymore. We can fall."

Anya bit off a string of obscenity that would have made many of the prisoners Sasha and Aleksis had once guarded blush. 

"You've seen this sort of thing," she said to them. "You've seen it before."

"We have," Sasha allowed. "Not on this scale, but we have seen the slow death of something so big it seemed eternal."

"You think maybe it's us dying?" Anya asked. "Humanity?"

Aleksis said nothing, but offered Sasha silent support through the drift, reminding her of all of the times they had thought the world was ending and somehow people managed to pull through. This was bigger than any of those, but Sasha took the support. Aleksis knew how she felt about it. Knew she would go down fighting but that she didn't like false hope.

"No," she told Anya after a minute or two. "No, humanity is too stubborn. But we are not working together now. We have to work together. That is the only way we will survive this."

That was why they had joined up, after all. Even knowing that the truth might come out about their immortality. Knowing people would question them. It would be worth it if they could help save people.

"Well I'll send out a memo about that then," Anya sighed. "You guys have three hours left and everything's quiet from the Breach."

Out beyond the wall, Cherno Alpha paced the coastline slowly, ploughing through the water like a barge. Sasha watched the ocean through the darkness and let the sounds of their Jaeger soothe her. 

"Would you like a story, Anya?" Aleksis asked from Sasha's side. She smiled. He was a wonderful storyteller but he rarely offered. Before the Kaiju she would ask him from time to time, but once they started to drift together he could tell her stories without even having to speak. 

They could practically hear Anya perk up and Sasha envisioned her in her seat in LOCCENT, putting down a mug of coffee and leaning forward towards the screens as if that would get her closer to them.

"Please, yes."

"I will tell you a story from when I was young."

"How young?" Anya asked, and Sasha could hear her smirk and feel Aleksis' answering amusement.

"Seventy years old," he told Anya as he drew up the memory of the story he would tell. Sasha kept her eyes on the coast but let the memory play out in her own mind as Aleksis told it.

Aleksis had been a relatively young Immortal at the time. Old enough to know the dangers their kind faced but not old enough to truly understand how to cope with it all. He had been traveling, offering assistance to villages and farmers in exchange for a roof and a meal each night. Usually his offer was well-received. He was a big strong man and he could get a lot done in a day. But as the year grew colder and colder he found fewer people had anything to spare beyond a corner of the house or barn. He had stopped even asking for food when he reached a particularly isolated village. Starvation could still kill Immortals temporarily, but they would recover. 

Sasha felt her own stomach hollow at the thought. She had starved to death a few times in the past and didn't care to ever do it again. 

"They had next to nothing," Aleksis told Anya. "A blight had taken their rye and the winter had come earlier than they had expected. And on top of it all, a rabid wolf had attacked the village just after the first snows had come. They lost three of their best people to the beast before they could put it down and no one dared to eat the meat."

"What did they do with it?" Anya asked. 

"They burned it," Aleksis told her, and Sasha could see the remains of it in the village square, a blackened mess that smelled of scorched meat and singed fur. The people had been in their homes when Aleksis had walked through the village and inspected the bits of bone in the ashes. "The worst part was the smell," Aleksis noted. "It smelled just enough like food to make everyone in the village hungrier than they had already been. There were children there. I saw them when I spoke to people. I had nothing with me or I would have handed it over without a second thought. The children just stared and the people would say nothing beyond the tale of the wolf and the men they had lost to it. They closed their doors to die in the privacy of their homes. I told the village headman that I would go hunt for them."

The story shifted then, in Sasha's head, with Aleksis in the woods just beyond the village. He managed to catch two hares - skinny creatures but better than nothing. He left them for two houses and went back out the next day after spending the night on the floor of a house that had belonged to one of the wolf's victims.

"I spent four days in that village, hunting in the woods, bringing back everything I found. The people barely spoke to me, but they took what I killed and they ate it. And then on the fifth day I found that the wolf had infected another of its pack."

Anya's gasp was audible through the comms. No doubt she was imagining what Sasha could see in her mind now: Aleksis alone in the woods, attacked by a sick wolf that no longer knew to be afraid of him. It had been a massive animal, even half-starved and rabid. And Aleksis had not been in the best shape. He hadn't eaten in days and he was tired from travel and hunting. The wolf had gotten several good bites in before he managed to gut it. 

"Was it…" Anya stopped, gathering herself before continuing. "Were the bites fatal?"

"Yes," Aleksis answered simply. "We heal very quickly, and we will revive from death, but some wounds simply do not heal fast enough."

But that was not the end of the story. Sasha could see Aleksis in the snow under bare trees, more snow falling over him as the sun set. He died in the memory and everything faded into a dull dark grey nothingness that she knew well enough from her own many deaths. 

"When I revived I expected to still be in the woods," Aleksis told Anya. Sasha already knew what he'd seen when he had awoken. "And I was, but there were people there. The people from the village. They had come looking for me when I did not return and found me there. They were discussing how to bring my body back to the village to be cremated when I awoke. It is always a risky thing, reviving in front of mortals who do not know about us. But they decided it was a sign from above that I had done such good for them that they would be given the chance to return the favor. I stayed with them through the winter. And make no mistake, Anya, it was a hard time. A raw time. People died that winter. Good people who sacrificed for the rest of the village. But when spring came and the snow melted the village was still there." 

Sasha had visited the village with Aleksis a hundred years later. They still spoke of him in hushed voices and on long winter nights they told the story of how he had helped the village save itself. It was still there even in the present, though she thought the stories would have probably faded into local tall tales by now.

"Sometimes we have to put ourselves on the line." Sasha told Anya. "Sometimes it is not enough, but sometimes it is. People will see that we are still patrolling. We are still fighting. And even if we die out here people will know we died trying to help."

***

By December the rumors had quieted a bit, as rumors do, but no one had truly forgotten. It didn't help that Sasha's prediction of fewer requisitions and late orders came to pass. Yuna and So-Yi had caught a couple of sub-par parts being used in repairs to Nova Hyperion and Sasha had stormed Marshal Reese's office with them. Reese was a solid senior officer with good connections with the rest of the Corps and the local government. She was a former pilot candidate who'd been grounded after losing a leg during an evacuation. But she couldn't be everywhere and while she'd been fighting to get Vladivostok's third Jaeger back from Lima someone had looked at the budget and made a call that could have cost Yuna and So-Yi their lives.

Little cuts. So many little cuts. Sasha shook her head as she and Aleksis watched Eden Assassin roll into the dome. Cherno was being given a routine tune-up and Nova Hyperion was on patrol. Eden was finally back from Lima, which had its own Jaegers back after some major repairs. It would be good to have another Jaeger in the dome again. At least they had that.

"Come on, we've got guests to welcome," Sasha said to Aleksis, turning away from the dome's bay. "And a poker game to win. We can welcome Armin and Luka back later. They'll be exhausted now."

They headed away from the Jaeger bay and down to the entrance where civilians with visitor passes were processed. They didn't get many civilians in for social calls at the dome. Usually visiting civilians were politicians or experts asked to consult on something. Social calls were frowned upon usually, but every so often exceptions were made for pilots.

Waiting in the lobby were two of Sasha and Aleksis' oldest friends. People they had known for over two centuries. They had ignored the chairs for visitors to wait in and stood in the center of the room. Sasha grinned when she saw them.

"Galina, Maks," she said, embracing one, then the other. "We have much to talk about."

"I'm sure we do," Maks said as he followed her out of the lobby and through the halls of the dome. "We have been hearing things."

Sasha glanced up at Aleksis as they boarded an elevator. When no one but the four of them got on before the doors closed she looked at their friends. "If what you have heard seems to spell the end of the Jaeger Program, we cannot dispute it or offer any comfort."

Galina bit her lips together in a familiar gesture of frustration. Maks just scowled and paced the elevator as it dropped down into the earth. 

"This is why we started stockpiling," he said finally, just before the doors opened. "Who else are we speaking to?"

"The Marshal and our LOCCENT ops chief. They all know about us and they are all good people. They will want to make sure everyone here is taken care of and that the program gets as much support as possible," Sasha said as she led them down the hall to Marshal Reese's office. 

"It might be impossible to keep it going," Maks warned quietly. 

Anya was already in the office, clipboard on the table in front of her, pen in hand. She looked up when Sasha and Aleksis led their friends in. 

"Anya, this is Maks and this Galina. Old friends," Sasha said as Anya wheeled herself over to shake their hands. "They have contacts we might find useful."

"What sort of contacts?" Anya asked as she went back to the table.

Galina took a seat near her and peeked at the clipboard. Anya pushed it over so she could read it better.

"All sorts," Maks said, sitting next to Galina. "We cultivate that sort of relationship."

"You're black market dealers," said a voice from the doorway. Marshal Reese walked in and went to the head of the table. She smiled thinly at the two visitors and then sat down. Only when she was seated did Sasha and Aleksis sit as well.

"We are," Galina said, sitting back a little to look Reese over. "Of course, if that is going to be a problem, we can certainly find others who will accept our help."

"Not a problem at all," Reese told them. "I'm just not big on dancing around a subject. I'll be blunt, folks: We're in trouble. The Kaiju haven't slowed down. If anything, they're coming through more frequently now than ever before. They're big, they're mean, and they seem hell-bent on taking us all out. And word right now is that the walls are a better bet than the Jaegers."

"They are _not_ ," Anya protested, pushing herself more upright in her chair. 

Reese gestured for her to settle. "Preaching to the choir here, Anya. But that's what I'm hearing. I just got off a conference call with the other Marshals. We've all been seeing cuts. We've got some severely damaged Jaegers that might not get repairs. We've got destroyed Jaegers that won't get replaced. We need to be looking at ways to keep our people safe. All of our people."

Anya pushed the clipboard to the center of the table. "That's a list of supplies we _need_ that we've been denied three times now. And I'm not talking about coffee and chocolate here. I'm talking about the bolts we replace every time Cherno comes in from patrol and monitors to replace the couple that have fried in the past year. We need those monitors. We've got a few cases of bolts but they won't last forever."

Galina took the clipboard and turned to Maks while they looked it over. "We can get all of this," she told everyone after a moment. "You start going through us, today. We have warehouses of supplies. Not top of the line, no, but they will serve your needs. The bolts, of course, we will make sure are in perfect condition."

"I just want to keep my pilots safe," Anya muttered.

"If we go through you, what will it cost us?" Reese asked. She had brought her own paperwork with her and quickly rifled through it. "At the moment our supply budget comes from the U.N. and from the local government. I've been able to wheedle quite a lot, but not enough."

"Call it a favor," Maks said, nodding to the Marshal. "We've made a fortune selling Kaiju parts and we owe Sasha and Aleksis."

"It was a long time ago," Sasha pointed out. "But it was a big favor."

"Yeah?" Anya looked over at them. "How big?"

"They saved both of our lives, and our students," Maks told her. "And we told them to ask us anything. We didn't expect it to be quite this large, but for this? For the Jaeger Program? We can do this. What good will any of our supplies do us if the Kaiju win?"

"How long ago was that?" Anya asked.

Maks looked to Sasha and Aleksis. Aleksis nodded to him. "They know," he said.

"Eighty years back we were traveling with our students and found ourselves trapped while a war surrounded us. They got us out," Galina told Anya. "At the cost of their own lives, several times over. We are not fond of fighting, ourselves."

"Their students were unable to defend themselves," Sasha added. "They are safe now."

Galina nodded. "All of them. Well inland. One of the first things we did when the Kaiju first came through was secure a large piece of property to settle our people on. We have space for many more, if you have staff who need homes."

"We'll talk about that when we get there," Reese said. Sasha noted she didn't dismiss it out of hand and made a mental note to keep an eye on their crew rosters.

The discussion went on late into the evening. Food was brought up at the Marshal's request and they talked through dinner. If Sasha had thought she knew the extent of what Galina and Maks could get their hands on, she was proven wrong by the time they left the meeting and led their friends to the guest quarters. Over the decades the two other Immortals had taken the time to stash away anything they thought might be remotely useful, only parceling it out in small bits when necessary. And they were making it all available to the Russian branch of the PPDC. They had also promised to pass along messages and requests to their network of suppliers and contacts. 

"You know with what we will be getting from them, this will make things easier on the other domes," Sasha pointed out as she and Aleksis got ready for bed. "What they're not sending to us can be sent elsewhere."

"If they don't just cut it out of the budget entirely," Aleksis said. "But I suspect Marshal Reese has ideas for that."

Sasha dreamed alone that night, wandering through warehouses full of boxes and barrels whose contents had long since turned to dust. She woke to a klaxon and deployment orders for Cherno Alpha and her pilots.

***

The Kaiju hadn't even been all that big, one of the smallest class 3s they'd ever seen. It was smart and fast, however, zipping around Cherno Alpha's lumbering form until the Kaidanovskys planted themselves in place and stopped chasing it.

"It's a speedy little piece of shit!" Sasha called to LOCCENT as she and Aleksis pivoted Cherno on one foot to reach for the Kaiju's tail. The damn thing twisted in their grasp, letting its tail break off like a fucking lizard would. They considered tossing the tail aside and in the immediacy of the drift decided not to. Who knew what it might do on its own - it was still thrashing about after all - and besides, it made for a good weapon. 

The Kaiju launched itself off a rocky outcropping, aiming for Cherno's chest. Together the Kaidanovskys lifted the arm with the tail in hand and whipped it at the Laiju, knocking it out of the air. While it was stunned from the blow they grabbed it with Cherno's other hand, getting a grip on a crest on its head and then beating it against the rocks. The tail stopped moving around the same time the rest of the Kaiju stopped. They got in a few more hits for good measure, then had LOCCENT scan it for signs of life.

"You're all clear," Anya, told them. "Come on home."

"Confirmed!" Sasha said, glad to leave the pulped body of the Kaiju on the rocks for whoever took care of such things. 

They'd just turned to make their way back to a pick-up point for the transport when suddenly the tail wrenched in their grasp, secondary brain apparently still alive and active. Unprepared for the unexpected movement, Cherno stumbled and came down hard on the rocks. The tail was crushed underneath them, finally permanently dead, but all the people in LOCCENT could hear was Sasha screaming as Aleksis' vitals blinked out. He'd hit his head somehow and then he was gone. 

Sasha twisted around in her harness. They were prone, Cherno all but unresponsive to her attempts to move it alone. One arm moved but she couldn't get it under them to lift them up. Aleksis hung in his rig, alarms flashing to alert Sasha to what she already knew: her husband was dead.

"Sasha! We're on the way!" Anya's voice called through damaged speakers. "Sasha? Sasha, are you okay? Sasha!"

Sasha didn't answer. Anya could see that Sasha herself was stable. Or as close to stable as anyone would expect, given that she was trapped and had just felt her husband die in the drift.

"Sasha? We're coming for you," Anya promised. "There are people coming. We'll get you out of there."

Anya must have thought she was panicking. Or in shock, maybe. It made sense. Sasha stared at Aleksis' limp form next to her, willing him to move. It would happen. It had to, and fuck the consequences. 

Less than a breath later, there he was, surging to life again and flailing with his suit still fully connected. Sasha couldn't hear what people were saying over the radio, though she knew this would have them all shouting for explanations. She was too busy to reassure them. The pons hardware wasn't designed to deal with a sudden reconnection and Sasha found herself yanked into her husband's head without warning. 

They stood in the middle of a riot, people around them surging like the tide in a storm. Aleksis looked around, not seeing Sasha at his side, then waded into the fray. Sasha hadn't been in Moscow for this. She had been traveling, avoiding cities and towns as much as possible. She had seen this, however, always from Aleksis' memories. The Black Plague had swept into Moscow, driving out anyone with the resources to leave, quarantines effectively shutting down the whole city. People died not just of the illness but of hunger. Of course they had rioted. People did that when they were desperate and scared and angry and dying. 

"Aleksis!" she called out, watching him pull people apart, using his size as his main advantage in trying to stop the destruction of a church. He didn't respond and she didn't know if he just couldn't hear her over the roar of the crowd or if he was so pulled into his memory that she simply didn't exist for him.

For whatever reason, Aleksis didn't stop what he was doing, repeating the actions he'd made centuries before, fighting hard until the inevitable happened again. It would always happen. There was no stopping the mob from rushing him, tackling him to the ground and trampling him. Sasha could feel his terror and anger as he tried to get up and couldn't, as his ribs cracked and his lungs were pierced, as he died for the first time.

The terror of it was that after he first revived the mob was still going strong and he was dragged in again. And again. He hadn't known what to do then. He hadn't known that he had died, though he had told Sasha he'd suspected it and simply not had time to dwell on it. Eventually a soldier put a pike through his gut and it took longer for him to come back from that.

Each time Aleksis died Sasha expected things to fade out as they usually did when he died, but something about this time kept her there, watching his lifeless body jolt with the energy that brought them back time and time again. She shoved her way through the mob and dragged him as far from the worst of it as she could. The next time he revived he didn't even look at her. He just lurched up and tried to go back to the church, which was a lost cause by then.

Sasha was screaming at him to come back, to wake up, to remember it was just in his head, they could leave this any time. She was still screaming when the world rocked under her feet and she knew somehow that Cherno Alpha was being lifted and carried back to the Vladivostok dome. 

"Aleksis! We have to stop this!" she cried, expecting no response but needing to try anyhow. This time, however, he turned back to look at her.

"I can't!" he shouted. "I didn't do it right last time! I can help this time!"

"No! No you can't!" she called, running towards him to cover his back. "This is all in the past, Aleksis. This is a memory. Your memory. You can't change a damn thing in it."

"But I can try," he insisted. 

They were still arguing as they fought the mob when a flash of blue light blinded them. Sasha blinked a few times and grabbed for Aleksis. Another flash and everything around them grew dim and slow, playing out without them.

"We have to go now," Sasha told Aleksis. "We can do more good awake."

He let the memory go slowly and pulled out of the drift on his own.

There were techs in their pod when they woke up. They had wires and plugs hooked up to both Sasha's and Aleksis' drivesuits and Sasha could hear Anya's voice over the comm.

"They should be coming out of it now," she was telling the techs. "Get them out of there so they can recover."

Sasha tried to thank her and found herself hoarse from screaming. She wasn't sure if it had just been her cries when Aleksis had died or if she'd been screaming out loud while they were down the rabbit hole. The techs were looking at her and Aleksis oddly, whispering amongst themselves and pointing to the readouts on the tablets they'd had hooked up to the drivesuits. Sasha glared at them until they apologized and stepped back. They were a good crew. She didn't like intimidating them. But she wasn't up to explaining what had happened just then. Not while she was still feeling like she'd been run through. 

"Rangers." Marshal Reese had come to meet them as they exited their Jaeger. "Go rest. Debriefing in my office in five hours."

Aleksis nodded and as they headed off they heard her ordering the techs to their quarters. It made sense. Rumors wouldn't spread if no one could talk. Not yet, anyhow.

***

"We knew this might happen," Sasha pointed out when she, Aleksis and Anya met in Reese's office. "We went over the possibilities back when we told you what we are."

"But we didn't plan on so many people knowing. I can try to pass it off as a technical glitch," Anya said, looking down at the tablet in her lap. She had readings from the entire incident playing through and was making notes as she watched the scans flicker across the screen. "But a few of those techs? Ives will guess something is up. He's been reading your stats for too long not to. And Linden up in LOCCENT was already asking some pretty pointed questions. I think he knows someone like you guys."

Reese walked in and made certain the door was shut firmly behind herself before taking a seat.

"First off, are you two going to be okay?" she asked, looking at Sasha and Aleksis, who nodded at the same time. "Good. At least there's that. You were both alive coming out of Cherno Alpha. We could, theoretically, tell everyone that you were unconscious and the anomalous readings are a computer error from being knocked around and waking up suddenly."

"That's what I was saying," Anya put in. "But, Marshal, people are going to talk. The conn-pod crew saw some of that raw data. A couple of the guys upstairs were already doing the math."

Reese frowned and rubbed at her face. "This is the trouble with having so many sharp people in one place."

They all sat there for a few minutes, contemplating their options. Anya busied herself with the data she'd been analyzing and Sasha knew that she and Aleksis would have to go over it with her later, explaining what had happened. From peering over at the tablet from a distance Sasha could see little spikes in one of the graphs and had a sneaking suspicion that each one represented a time when Aleksis had died in his memory. 

"What if we told everyone," Aleksis finally said. "If we brought together the people who suspect, who were in LOCCENT when it happened, our pod crew, and told them. Explained. What could it hurt? These are good people, Sasha," he said to her at her frown. "And if they know, they will know how to help us best if this happens again. If the worst happens."

Both Anya and Reese were looking at them. Sasha sat back and examined her hands, turning them over to look at her palms. Immortals used their hands a lot when fighting. You had your sword in your hands all the time. But she hadn't been using it as much. Her calluses were all but gone. Immortal healing and the natural outcome of taking up a new weapon. Strange how the world could change so much so quickly. She had fought with a sword for hundreds of years, and now here she was. Here they all were. Secrets just didn't seem as important now. Maybe it was the drift. Maybe it was the close quarters. Maybe it was the end of the world.

"Just the people we need to tell, for now," she said. "Once it gets out to more people it will be hard to explain it right."

"Of course," Aleksis agreed. "But they deserve the truth. Truly, if this were to happen again to either of us? We would want them to know."

It was easy enough to gather those who needed to know. Most of the dome just knew that _something_ had happened at the end of the fight and they'd lost Aleksis' signal for a couple of minutes. The details were only known to the people in LOCCENT and the pod crew who handled the drivesuits. Twenty-five people, Anya not included since she'd known already. 

When everyone was assembled in a meeting room, door closed, Sasha and Aleksis explained themselves to their fellows. As they demonstrated their ability to heal with matching gashes on their arms Sasha saw a couple of people near the back nodding as if they'd guessed as much already. One of the men who handled their helmets looked ill and several others had to look away for a moment, but none of them argued and none of them shied away.

"This is need-to-know information," Marshal Reese told the group. "Consider yourselves part of a very elite team now. This does not go beyond that door. You do not tell your friends, you do not tell your roommates, you do not tell your husbands and wives or your children. You tell no one."

"We are trusting you with our lives," Aleksis said, voice oddly quiet. "And that may sound strange, with what we have told you, but it is true. We have seen our people slaughtered for this and we put ourselves in harm's way each time we go out."

Everyone in the room nodded to him and Sasha and when Reese dismissed them many came up to ask their Rangers questions, clasp their hands, clap them on the shoulders. Linden told them he'd had a Immortal neighbor when he'd lived in the States. Anya caught Ives before he could get to them and shoved her tablet into his hands, already talking to him about the readings he'd been questioning earlier. He followed her out, jogging a little to keep up with her as she sped down the hall. 

"That went better than I expected," Sasha murmured after she and Aleksis excused themselves and started back to their quarters.

"We are an asset," Aleksis said, and Sasha caught an unusually smug tone to his voice. "Soon we will be a point of pride. The only Immortal Jaeger pilot team in the PPDC."

***

When word came through that Vladivostok had been given a final closing date Sasha and Aleksis had known it was coming for months already. It was just before the eleventh anniversary of Trespasser's attack and they were in the middle of a remote conference with Maks and Galina when Marshal Reese interrupted, unlocking the conference room door and then re-locking it behind herself.

"You two aren't supposed to know this yet, and you two," she added, pointing to the screen where Maks and Galina's faces were, "aren't supposed to be in the loop at all. But you need to know. We need to step things up. And I have a message from Marshal Pentecost."

All attention was on Marshal Reese now. She sighed heavily and looked around at Sasha and Aleksis and at Maks and Galina. "We've been given a date. A final date. Cherno Alpha is being relocated to Hong Kong under Marshal Pentecost. He has a plan but he wouldn't go into detail with me. All he told me was that he needs every Jaeger he can get when we're all finally shut down and he needs a nuclear bomb."

Silence stretched in the room while all five of them considered these requests. Finally, Sasha nodded, smirking to herself. "A bomb. And how big is he hoping this bomb will be?"

"As big as we can get."

Galina turned to a display to her right and tapped out a few rapid queries. A moment later she was nodding too. "We can do that. It might not be all in one piece, but I trust you have people for this?"

Marshal Reese smiled thinly. "More people than we can keep on, unfortunately." She sighed and finally took a seat. "We can keep everyone working directly on Cherno and they'll go with you to Hong Kong. We can keep on the LOCCENT crew and Marshal Pentecost has assured me he will find places for them. Of everyone else, we have to cut down to a fifth of who we have left, essential staff only. And then unless people leave Hong Kong, we'll lose them when we shut down."

They'd already lost so many, people being shuttled out of the dome every time a Jaeger fell to a Kaiju. The dome was already running on what felt like a skeleton crew. But everyone was safe. They'd made sure of that, Maks and Galina taking everyone who wanted to go to their settlement. It was harsh country but it was inland and it had food and protection and people who gave a damn. Almost everyone had taken them up on their offer.

After settling the details as much as they could Aleksis and Sasha escorted Marshal Reese out into the corridors. There was no one else around and for a moment Sasha could almost believe the dome was already empty. The only Jaegers left were Cherno and Nova Hyperion and their crews had been consolidated into one section of the living quarters. There were no meetings happening, no training, no classes. All the cadets who'd been stationed there had already been sent on to Sydney, Los Angeles or Hong Kong. 

Then Anya came reeling around the corner and nearly ran them down and Sasha smiled grimly. Thank goodness they'd be able to take Anya with them. If anyone tried to shut her out of the Hong Kong control room Sasha was sure Anya herself would put a stop to it. But they'd fight for her anyhow. 

"You guys get the news?" Anya asked, stopping herself inches from Sasha's toes. "I'm about to get really fucking busy. My lists' lists are going to have lists."

Sasha and Aleksis moved to flank Anya's chair as she continued down the hall. "People to move, supplies to shift. I hope you know I'm not letting anyone shuttle me off to the middle of nowhere. Who'll take care of you two assholes if I'm not around?"

"We would be lost without you," Aleksis assured Anya. "We are keeping as many of our LOCCENT crew as will come with us. You know our secrets."

Anya nodded. "We do. But even if we didn't, we'd want to stick with you. You guys are the longest serving pilots left in active duty. We're damn proud of you and you should know it."

They'd talked about that. And not talked about it, sharing their thoughts on the matter in the drift during the long hours they spent patrolling. If things hadn't been so chaotic, if people hadn't been so glad just to have them active and strong and capable and willing to take on the long shifts no one else could handle, maybe someone might have noticed they healed up faster when they were injured. Someone might have realized they not only looked the same as they had when they'd started out - and the strain of the job did noticeably age most pilots - but they looked the same as the photos on their IDs from their previous jobs. But those weren't the questions the press was interested in. They were asking about funding and the coastal wall programs and the increasing frequency of attacks and resettlement projects and ration-hoarders and the closest anyone had gotten to asking about Sasha and Aleksis was when a reporter had gotten up the nerve to ask if they'd found out any unsavory secrets about each other in the drift. Aleksis had needed to pull Sasha away from that one before she did something she'd have regretted later.

Anya headed off when they reached an elevator, promising them she'd talk to them later after she'd wrestled some of the chaos into something resembling order. Sasha and Aleksis had gone to find Yuna and So-Yi. Because there was some unpleasant news to break to the two younger pilots. News they wouldn't like at all. And Sasha had volunteered herself and Aleksis to break it to them.

"What do you mean, Los Angeles?" Yuna demanded, launching herself out of her seat as soon as Sasha finished telling the two about their imminent transfer.

"All they have left is Mammoth Apostle. There aren't that many of us still fighting," Aleksis said, though Sasha knew he agreed that the whole situation was hideous. There simply wasn't a good solution. 

"We should be going to Hong Kong, with you," So-Yi said. She'd stayed seated but her fists were clenched in her lap. "Or staying here."

"We should all be staying here," Sasha said, nodding her agreement. "But we are not being given a choice. Stick it out in Los Angeles until they shut down, then join us in Hong Kong. We'll need all the help we can get."

Yuna and So-Yi shared a glance, then both looked at Sasha and Aleksis.

"What's going on?" Yuna asked. "There has to be some sort of plan."

"There is a plan," Aleksis allowed. "But we do not have the details. Just stay alive, both of you. You won't be there long, I'm sure. All the domes are shutting down."

Yuna turned and glared at the wall instead of firing off a response to that and Sasha watched her control herself. It only took a few moments, which was good. When Yuna turned around again she was nodding as she went back to sit next to So-Yi. 

"We'll see you there," she said once she was seated again. "Whatever the plan is, we want in on it." So-Yi was nodding as her co-pilot spoke.

"Good," Sasha told them. "Now, talk to your crew. Get yourselves ready. You're leaving tomorrow night."

***

The Kaiju that ripped apart Nova Hyperion never made it to land. Striker Eureka had been sent to help out when they'd first identified a Kaiju heading towards the United States coast. But that was the end of Nova and the rumors said Yuna and So-Yi had both died in the attack.

Anya came to find them late that night, waiting in the wide open doorway of the kwoon while Sasha and Aleksis set aside their swords to work on hand-to-hand techniques. When they took a break and saw her there they both walked over.

"What's the news?" Sasha demanded.

"Official report is that they were dead when they were recovered," Anya told them. "It's been tough to get news out of Los Angeles. Everyone's starting to panic. That's us down to three intact Jaegers and the one being rebuilt. That's not enough! That can't be enough."

They'd been counting on having Nova Hyperion alongside Cherno, Striker and Crimson Typhoon. Now they'd definitely have to go along with the backup plan Pentecost had his daughter working on. It wasn't that Sasha didn't like Mako Mori, or trust her to have that old Mark III Jaeger up and running perfectly. It was getting pilots who could handle a Mark III. The Mark III pilots were all dead, aside from the absent Raleigh Becket. Everyone else was long gone, dead or injured or missing a co-pilot and re-pairing with a new co-pilot was almost unheard-of. The Hansens had done it, but then Herc had gone from piloting with his brother to piloting with his son. Sasha ran through the list of living Jaeger-less pilots she knew of and none of them had any connections with any trained or half-trained cadets. What a mess.

Anya didn't stay to watch them pack up their gear. She had plenty to do, even with so many people in the Hong Kong dome. It had been a bit of a shock, going from the vacant halls of Vladivostok to the bustle of Hong Kong. There had been a time when Vladivostok had been just like this - cadets and crew hurrying from one task to the next, always getting ready for the next attack, the next challenge. But they'd grown so used to the eerie quiet of an empty dome and they hadn't been in Hong Kong long enough to truly be used to it yet.

People made room for them as they walked through the corridors to their quarters. The entire Russian complement had been given a section to themselves, crew, techs and Sasha and Aleksis all together in a long block of concrete rooms. The crew closed ranks around them whenever possible, protective of their pilots. Their secret. 

The other crews just seemed to assume the Russians were snobs. Sasha hadn't gone out of her way to correct them. It didn't matter if the others saw them as elitists, so long as they knew Cherno Alpha could still fight. Would still fight.

Two of their pit crew stopped them as they entered their hall, letting them know that some crucial repairs had been finished less than an hour before. Cherno would be ready for patrol the next day. Just in case.

The attacks were getting even worse. Patrols happened even though they couldn't afford to lose any more Jaegers. 

Knowing the Kaidanovskys were in for the night, the crew on the hall seemed to enforce quiet amongst themselves. As Sasha washed her face and then waited in bed for Aleksis she could hear a few people quietly pacing down the hall, muffled voices, someone's door squeaking shut. A shatterdome never truly went to sleep, but on this hall it rested for a few hours at least.

With Aleksis in bed, Sasha stretched out alongside him and closed her eyes. The battlefield dream would come again. She hadn't had a night without it since they had come to Hong Kong. But she had never been one to run from a challenge. She would sleep and she would dream and she would face the dead and she knew already that Yuna and So-Yi would be on the field early this time.

***

The water was rushing into Cherno's conn-pod and alarms were sounding from every possible corner. Some of them Sasha and Aleksis had heard before. They'd been piloting Cherno Alpha for a long time, after all. No one had ever expected a Mark I to still be standing after so much action. Some of the alarms, however, were new and promised the end. Sasha called out orders and a demand for help, Aleksis using every ounce of himself to keep them upright and fighting. Otachi's acid had eaten through their hull in seconds and in the drift Sasha could see the memories of every time they'd taken damage. This was the worst by far. As the Kaiju outside grabbed hold of them and ripped Cherno apart and the water came up around them Sasha screamed and heard Aleksis in her head more than her ears.

The strange part was how long the pons kept working even after their Jaeger was torn to bits. The backup power supply kicked in somehow and there they were, submerged and trapped in a twisted mass of metal, still in each other's minds. You thought of the most bizarre things when you were dying. As her lungs gave up and finally pulled in water Sasha found herself lost in the drift. Aleksis was fighting the water, fighting death. He'd never drowned before. Sasha knew that immediately. She had. More than once. It was amazing the things you could think, the speed your mind worked, even as you died. She pulled up memories of dying in the water, shipwrecked and tangled in sails and lines. She remembered falling through ice and slamming numb hands against it from underneath, looking for the hole she'd gone through and failing to find it.

Drifting. They were drifting. Aleksis was with her in the water as she revived and untangled herself a little before dying again. He was with her as she revived and thrust herself up to the surface to try and break through the newly formed ice over the hole. He was with her, dying over and over, angry each time that they couldn't do more to save themselves. He was with her as sharks circled the watery wreckage. He was with her as she broke through the ice only to slip back down, too weak to heave herself up yet.

In the water of the bay, trapped in their harnesses in a twisted ball of metal that had once been Cherno Alpha's conn-pod, Sasha and Aleksis died and died and died again, drifting with every doomed revival.

***

Salvage of the Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon wreckage was hardly top priority. While the two ruined Jaegers languished in the bay their crews were hastily shifted to work on the remaining Jaegers, getting them back in fighting shape for the final assault on the Breach. It was only after the dust settled and Mako Mori and Raleigh Becket were back in the dome and the world was starting to celebrate that Anya really kicked up a fuss.

"We need to go get them," she insisted, having parked herself in the LOCCENT doorway. The rest of the Russian crew was standing alongside her, glaring at the rest of the LOCCENT staff. There were six Russians who'd been kept in the control room proper and they all looked ready to fight anyone who tried to tell them that retrieving the bits and pieces and bodies wasn't on the immediate agenda.

Anya looked Tendo Choi square in the eye and curled her hands into fists.

"Of course we can get them," he assured her. "We're getting everyone we can. We'll drag the bay if we have to. But that takes time."

"We know where the pod is," Anya said. "We put a tracer in. Just in case."

Tendo looked around at the assembled Russians. More of them had come up from the dome floor - men and women in jumpsuits and uniforms - all the Russian transfers. They were crowding the corridor outside LOCCENT. 

"Look," Anya said, reaching up to motion to Tendo. He leaned in towards her. "There's a chance… They might be alive."

Tendo gave her a pitying look and was probably about to say something but Anya forestalled whatever platitude he would have tried to give her by turning herself around and heading out of the room.

"Come on," she told the other Russians. "We'll get them ourselves. Let's get some boats out there, find that pod. Hope neither of them got beheaded."

"What do you mean they might be alive?" Tendo asked, hurrying after her. "I know the T90s. They didn't have escape pods. Anya, I heard the water come in around them. You heard it too. I know it's hard but we heard them die."

Anya didn't bother looking back at him. Around her the Russians were quickly making plans, breaking into teams to conduct a very focused salvage operation. Several of them headed towards the outer doors that led to the docks. The rest followed Anya as she went for the Russian hall.

"We heard them die, yes," Anya hissed at him as they passed open rooms full of people celebrating, mourning, sitting in shock that it was truly over. "But the Kaidanovskys, they are special. I heard Aleksis die before and he was alive again by the time we got to Cherno. They swore us to secrecy, but people will have to know now. We can't just leave them down there."

She almost left Tendo behind at that revelation, but he hastened after her as she reached her own quarters where she had set up a bank of terminals. She brought up a 3D display of the bay and spun it, quickly finding a pulsing dot.

"That's it," she told Tendo. On a monitor nearby he could see a video feed of the bay. The salvage boats were already heading out on the water. 

"What about the Weis?" he asked, taking a seat next to Anya and looking over the controls she'd rigged. "Are they… special?"

"No one ever told me if they were," Anya said, watching the video feed. "You could ask their crew. We've known for years. The whole team that transferred here from Vladivostok. We'll get what we can from Crimson Typhoon too, but I didn't set a trace on them. Never had a chance."

Tendo nodded. "Okay. Yeah. Um. I've overseen a few salvage operations. We're probably going to need some coffee."

***

It was worse than the first time she had ever revived. That much Sasha knew. She held her breath as she woke, expecting water at her lips and nose. But there was no water. The air was dry and smelled familiarly of concrete and metal and Aleksis' boots. Sasha opened her eyes and reached out for whoever was beside her and found Aleksis to one side in their bunk and Anya to the other, seated nearby.

"I had to tell some people," Anya said as Sasha moved to sit up. They'd been stripped out of their drivesuits and were only wrapped in bathrobes. How anyone had managed to maneuver Aleksis while he was dead she couldn't imagine. She'd had to drag him a few times in the past and it had been torture. That would be why Anya had to tell people. That and getting them out of the water in the first place.

"How long?" Sasha asked as she felt Aleksis stir beside her. "Did they do it? What happened?"

"They got through," Anya said, and Sasha felt her chest hitch. "We lost you and Crimson in that first fight. The big one that ripped Cherno apart had some sort of bio-EMP that took out Striker, but Becket and Mori got it together and took down both Kaiju. They made it through, sealed the Breach. But we lost Chuck Hansen and… We lost Marshal Pentecost. Herc Hansen was injured, couldn't pilot. Pentecost went down in Striker."

Sasha had no words for that. How many times had she seen a leader sacrifice themselves? How many people had she seen die for a cause? There were no numbers for it. There was no way to describe it. Aleksis wrapped an arm around her and she felt him crying silently against the top of her head. 

"It's been two days," Anya told them when they both managed to take clear breaths at last. "Everyone said we'd find bodies and give you all a proper memorial, but salvage takes time. I had to run it myself mostly. Choi helped. So. He knows. So does Herc Hansen. A couple of the others who pitched in when the winches wouldn't haul you out without backup. Becket and Mori know. We figured you wouldn't mind them knowing."

"We don't," Aleksis assured Anya. "And we owe you all a debt for bringing us up to the surface."

"We owed you both already," Anya said. "Without you most of the Vladivostok staff would have been sent out to find homes and jobs in the cities that blamed us for abandoning them. You got us all a home."

Sasha smiled. "We should call Maks and Galina."

"They did say they would save a place for us," Aleksis added. "If we want to keep our little secret for much longer, we will have to disappear for a while."

***

There was a lot of land around the settlement Maks and Galina had built. Sasha could see it in the distance - a cluster of buildings and farms built with the money and supplies their friends had been stockpiling for decades. The land around it was hilly but not too hard to walk. They'd crossed worse recently, hiking in to keep themselves off the map as much as possible. When they were a day out they'd called in to Maks and Galina, telling them they were coming in on foot. Their friends had told them they would send someone to meet them and Sasha could see who they'd sent at the top of a hill.

Yuna waved to them when she saw them and So-Yi followed suit. They'd been exercising on the hilltop when Sasha had spotted them. As Sasha and Aleksis climbed the hill Sasha felt a twinge of deja vu, but this wasn't the field in her dream. It wasn't a battlefield full of bodies. And Yuna and So-Yi were both there, alive, and as Sasha and Aleksis drew closer they could both feel the presence of other Immortals. Young Immortals. Brand new to it all.

"They told us you died," Yuna said, shoving Sasha's shoulder when they got close enough.

"They told us you did too," Sasha retorted. "I wonder how they could possibly have gotten that wrong?"

So-Yi was sheathing the blade she'd had in her hand. Sasha recognized one of Galina's spares and made a mental note to look through her own, transported to the settlement years ago to be stored against future need. 

"Will you teach us?" So-Yi asked as all four headed down the other side of the hill towards the settlement. "Maks said they haven't had anyone they could teach for almost a century."

Yuna and So-Yi were both already good in a fight. They'd handled swords, though not the kind they held now. Most Immortals had laid down their swords when the first Kaiju had come through the Breach, but the war was over now. It was impossible to know whether that peace would hold.

Sasha smiled. It had been a long time since they'd had students together. Since Maks and Galina, two hundred years in the past. It would be good to have students again.

"Of course," she told them as they walked towards their new home. "We'll show you everything."


End file.
